Alan was born in Dublin, Ireland to Frank and Dorothy Cowle on August 17th 1936. He was educated in Ireland, becoming a church organist and choirmaster.
Alan emigrated to Toronto Ontario in the late 1960s. He made a living, always related to music from then until his death from AIDS at the age of 56 in Toronto.
When I got to know Alan he had already been the organist and choir director of Knox Presbyterian Church in Oakville for several years. He would commute out to Knox for weekly choir practice and Sunday service in his VW Beetle from his apartment at 2547 Bloor Street in Toronto, just east of the Humber River ravine and the Old Mill subway station.
Alan’s living room balcony and bedroom window looked out over the Humber marshes. Quacking ducks and breezes in the nearby oak trees made his home feel peacefully removed from the bustle of the city.
Alan lived alone, but had many friends whom he loved to entertain, often holding a small dinner party whenever I would come to stay for a weekend. I met so many wonderful guys who were his friends, almost all of whom, sadly, sooner or later died of AIDS.
Church music usually provides a part time source of income, at best. Alan was enterprising in developing additional music related sources of income. He managed the soloist career of Toronto soprano Irene Carmen. He played the organ for the A.W.Miles Funeral Home, often at Our Lady of Sorrows. He would sometimes host CBC Radio’s classical music programme, ‘Off The Record’.
He was involved with the Canadian Youth Orchestra for a time.
Alan worked full time for, and eventually acquired, the classical sheet music purveyor International Music from the estate of its original owner Hugh Armstrong. For many years it operated from the basement level of the Remenyi building on Bloor Street across from Varsity Stadium.
Alan was a member of the Toronto chapter of the RCCO, the Royal Canadian College of Organists. When he was the chapter president in 1972 he led a full bus of Toronto members to Buffalo NY on what is termed an ‘Organ Crawl’ wherein half a dozen of the city’s most interesting church organs were demonstrated by by their resident organists, members of the Buffalo chapter of the AGO, the American Guild of Organists. Alan hosted the Americans the following year for a crawl of Toronto’s finest instruments.
Alan’s delightful parents visited him in Toronto, and he would visit them in Dublin. Alan was a large man whose mother’s affectionate nickname for him was ‘Tiny’. Alan’s sister, Thelma Playle and her teenaged daughter Heather, came to visit one time in the 1970s from Stevenage England. He had such a lovely family.
Favourite Memory
Many of my favourite memories of Alan are of the laughter around his dinner table. My parents loved him, and so did my Aunt Helen who sewed a royal purple apron for him to preside at his famous dinners.
I will forever be grateful to Alan for coming all the way to Brockville Ontario to play the organ at St. Peter’s Anglican Church for the funerals of both of my parents in 1983 and 1991, and for my sister’s wedding in 1985.
Message to Loved One
I wish Alan had lived. He’d be 89 this summer (2025), and I’ve made many good friends over the thirty three years since his death. I’d love to introduce him to them all.
HIV Awareness
All but five of Alan’s gay male friends whom I met did not die of AIDS. They were all beautiful souls. He and these friends of his would have continued to enrich the lives of all the rest of us over the thirty three years since Alan died.
The loss to Toronto, and indeed to Canadian society has been immeasurable.